When I bought the new iMac last week, also got a copy of VirtualPC with Windows XP — a complete Windows machine running in emulation in an OS X window. Don’t need Windows access often, except to verify that a site I’m working on isn’t too broken in Windows. But when I do, I have to haul an old laptop out of the garage, clutter up the desk, wait a year for it to boot… VirtualPC is a bit of a dog, as expected — a lot of math to turn all the bits inside out, but this machine has 2GB of memory, and VirtualPC really isn’t that bad. It actually boots faster than that laptop does, so there.
Odd – you can copy/paste between operating systems, but you have to toggle between Ctrl-C in Windows and Cmd-C on the Mac side. Kind of like standing with one leg in one country and the other in a…
Funny – literally five minutes after launching it for the first time, got a call from a client needing to know how to configure Outlook Express to work with the birdhouse mail server. “Funny you should ask,” I said, firing up OE in a VM while choking back tears (of laughter, joy, disgust).
I have a mail template with instructions for clients letting them know how to configure mail for our service with a half-dozen mail clients. It saves a ton of time.
I do have FAQs with screenshots online for this:
http://hosting.birdhouse.org/howto.php
but a lot of people still like a lot of hand-holding. PJ, what’s the URL to yours?